


Jonsa Drabbles

by mimiofthemalfoys



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Haunted Houses, Hurt/Comfort, Love/Hate, Modern Westeros, Past Abuse, Pining, Political!Jon, Rape Recovery, Wedding Planning, gendrya (mentioned), musings, throbb (minor), vale of eyrie, what nonsense have i written
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-17
Updated: 2018-11-23
Packaged: 2019-08-25 00:20:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 5,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16650694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mimiofthemalfoys/pseuds/mimiofthemalfoys
Summary: A collection of drabbles for the Jonsa Drabbles fest, all based off one word prompts. Excuse my awful writing as drabbles are not my thing!





	1. The Winter Rose

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 1: Firsts  
> fetus Jonsa in a glass garden. Enjoy. :)

* * *

 Jon sees it first, the swath of blue against a sea of pure, blinding whiteness.

He listens from his perch on the crumbling stone wall which separates godswood from glass gardens. Listens for Robb, and Theon and the rest of the children scampering through the front yards like a pack of mountain lion cubs. Nothing. The other children won’t head this way, they’ll visit the hot springs, the nooks of the crystal caves. But this time, he knows, they’ll return empty-handed. He’s been there already.

Gently, he lifts himself to the top of the structure. Jon is not Bran, but he is good enough.

And his prize awaits him. Nestled in soft tulle curtains of snow- blooms a fresh batch of beautiful, deep blue winter roses. The first of the year, startlingly bright in colour, filling the air with fragrance.

 _Harbingers of good luck_ , Old Nan had said. _Of beauty, and love, and the strength of our land_.

Slowly, the twelve-year old’s grey eyes light up and he smiles.

 _Victory_.

Their Lord Father, Ned Stark, has told them of this custom, one of many House Stark traditions. Every winter, the castle of Winterfell becomes a Northern bride, with veils of frost draping every arch and ice shards sparkling like jewelled coronets on every eave. Then, Winterfell’s children, noblemen’s offspring and those of cooks, butchers, stewards alike, storm the castle grounds in search of the first Winter Rose. The winner has a great feast thrown in their name. Frankly, Jon doesn’t care about the feast. The thought of having everyone toast his health makes his toes go cold. All he wants is to get an upper hand over Robb and Theon for sheer mental peace.

When he descends, however, he is met not by some hero’s deserved applause but by a very annoyed intruder.

“Jon Snow,” Sansa says with as much ice as a ten year old can muster. She is dressed in blue, her red-gold hair covered by a hood. He doesn’t understand her, this half-sister of his. Like her mother, she is more Tully than Stark, more water than ice. They don’t speak much, he feels odd around her. Dirty, blighted beside her refined, almost Southron prettiness.

“What are you doing here?” he asks her. And regrets it. Winterfell is her home. _He_ is the outsider.

She practically cringes at that. “What are _you_ doing here?”

Jon shrugs. The flowers weigh heavy on his conscience.

“Robb and the others went upriver to the caves. I thought you should know. So you could accompany them.” She clears her throat. “Don’t you want to win?”

“And then? Have the minstrels and high lords raise their glasses to a bastard? And see your Lady Mother purse her lips in rage, no doubt? I’ll pass, I don’t want people to celebrate me for a day and then hate me the rest of the year!”

“We don’t hate you.”

Grey eyes meet blue ones, and Sansa, uncharacteristically flushed, says, “I mean I don’t _like_ you, either, that’s Arya. It’s just…..”

He waits.

“Look…it’s the first day of the year, and…” Sansa falters. “I’m working on being slightly better to you this year.”

“Well that’s a first alright,” Jon grins. Sansa almost smiles back- then controls herself. “So why aren’t you at the river? You’ve not already given up, have you?”

He sees the peace offering the tiny redhead is offering him. He takes it.

“Wrong,” he says, reaching for her hand. Sansa is momentarily taken aback at this liberty, but then at the next moment she gives a little, unladylike yelp of delight. He has placed two perfect full-blown blue roses into her palm.

“I don’t hate you, either, Lady Stark,” he says. Before she can react, Jon leaves Sansa, small snow lady, with her roses and her dimples, and walks out of the garden, whistling.

He knows. He knows she is smiling, though he can’t see it.  And he knows that this may have been a first, but it surely won’t be the last time he is the reason behind Sansa Stark’s smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was thinking of that saying we have about weddings- something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue-and I thought of writing a fic full of Blue wedding symbolisms. Idk how much that got across.


	2. Healing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 2: Touch  
> I wrote this to sync with the show timeline. This chapter takes place between the end of Season 5 and the episode "Book of The Stranger" in Season 6 when Jon and Sansa are reunited. Jon has just been resurrected, Sansa has fled from Winterfell.  
> Please note there are some triggers in this chapter:  
> *tw body horror* *tw blood* *tw abuse* *tw rape (implied)* *PTSD*

* * *

Sometimes, he puts a hand to the belly and feels the blade there still, sheathed by raw, burning slices of skin, _his_ skin. He twists the hilt and the night heaves, as blood spurts out onto his blue, frozen fingers. He twists it again. The blood sizzles like oil in the cold, smokes, reeks of sour metal.

His head rings. He touches his mangled neck, warm, and when he brings back his hand, it’s damp and red.

_Traitor._

He falls. The snow is beautiful. Cold, soft, powdery. He buries himself in the feel of it. Like a child seeking his mother.

_Snow and snow. Snow and snow._

* * *

On the road, sleeping by a wood fire, she relives it all. She remembers playing with the brooch-clasps on her wedding dress, touching and tracing and scratching the fins of the silver trouts, chewing on her lip until there’s silver underneath her nails and blood on her tongue.

 _I won’t hold your hand. I won’t touch you_ , she had snarled at Theon. Or Reek. Or both.

In the end though, Theon didn’t even matter anymore. He was only a bystander to all that happened, here, _here_ , in her own house.

She thinks of Ramsay’s kiss, his filthy venom on her cheeks, his hands hacking at the laces of her dress, his flat reptilian palm rough on her back, her back which still bore a map of red lines and blue welts, one of many gifts from King’s Landing. Vomit swells in her throat, burning her guts. She presses her face to the furs, prays so the Stranger can take her.

No gods. Nothing of anything.

* * *

 

Why did she bring him back? Jon had asked the sorceress.

She’d said something about a prophecy and a Prince and dragons and…and horseshit. That was not the answer he’d wanted. _No, no, let me go, let me lie where they found me, let me freeze._

He stays alone. He doesn’t pray. His Watch has ended.

He can’t remember Alliser’s face when it happened. Or Olly’s. Faces are nothing, voices mean nothing.

What he does remember, however, are the tactile details of it. Frayed ends of his black leather robes clinging to damp skin. The thick engulfing mix of snow and earth in his mouth. The bloody curve of an ally’s knife. They make him shudder, these memories of his, taking him unawares, leaving him shriveled and sick.

 _Eat so you may build your strength, Snow,_ Tormund Giantsbane tells him every day. He bends over to slap Jon’s back. Jon shrinks from his touch, moves away, even at the cost of appearing rude.

He means well, the Wildling, but Jon would rather be charred alive by dragons than let anybody touch him again.

* * *

Pod’s hand brushes her bare leg as he helps her up her horse. She grits her teeth, does her best to appear calm. But as they begin their slow Northwards journey, leaving the last tavern behind, it takes all her strength to not give in to tears.

* * *

 He sees her before she sees him. Beaten down, ragdoll-limp, like a bird ripped by a storm. Disheveled hair, dirty dress, stained face. The day she’d left, she’d looked like a princess. The question lives and dies in his throat.

_What did they do to you?_

She turns. She sees him. The earth opens underneath their feet.

What he sees is the red of weirwoods and the gardens of Winterfell. What she sees is the steam rising off the hot springs, the old twisted wooden bridges and halls of a wintry childhood they had traded for four summers of grief.

He descends the steps, knuckles white, shaking. She awaits him, shaking too.

When Jon Snow and Sansa Stark embrace, they do so under the watchful eyes of half a hundred Night’s Watch brothers and Wildlings, fully clothed, hands covered by moleskin gloves. But it doesn’t matter. What matters is that Jon’s cheek grazes against Sansa’s bare face and she doesn’t flinch or weep. What matters is that Sansa buries her head in the crook of Jon’s shoulder and he pulls her tighter, doesn’t back down. They stay like this, long after the first waves of pain have welled and crashed within.

For the first time in what seems like forever, they crave, die to be touched.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this because- as someone who's experienced PTSD due to abuse myself, I wanted to demonstrate the aversion to touch that certain people get and are tragically never able to overcome all their life. Jon and Sansa were so lucky to be reunited so that they could seek comfort in each other. This fic was not an attempt to romanticise their pain but to show the nature of it. I hope you all liked it :)


	3. A Wedding on the Cards

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 3: Modern AU  
> Jon and Sansa, Robb's annoying sister and Robb's equally annoying best friend, unsuccessfully attempt to visit a wedding boutique shortly before Robb and Margaery get hitched.   
> Spoiler alert: they squabble a lot.  
> A/N: Jon is about 26 or so, Sansa is 23.

“Why me?” he asks from underneath the duvet.

“Because you’re best _fucking_ man, unfortunately for the both of us. I suppose even Robb has his moments of questionable decision-making.”

“What time is it?”

“Late.”

Sigh. Sansa is scary when she is angry. Her nostrils flare and she gives the famous Frosty Tully Stare down of Judgement. You don’t want to be on the receiving end of it.

Jon sits up in his bed, groggy haired, stubble-faced, half-unbuttoned shirt. In contrast Sansa is 5’8 inches of immaculate grooming: flawless red curls swept to one shoulder, winged liner on point, gorgeous in her black-and-red ensemble. She looks like a model. He looks like a dehydrated gremlin.

She tosses him his jacket. “MOVE.”

“Would it kill you to be less bitchy?” he asks, shuffling out of bed.

“Would it kill you to maybe shave?” she retorts from the door. “I don’t want to be kicked out of the boutique for bringing along my pet grizzly bear.”

“So I’m your pet now,” he mumbles.

She turns around at the door, her eyes burning a hole into his face and Jon instantly regrets his words, his face and his life all at once.

* * *

 

Martell House is a family business; Sansa knows them through her friend Myrcella, who’s dating one of the younger Martells. It’s a nice place, very lush in its aesthetic: warm, tropical shades, ornate candelabras, almost royal. “Marge will approve,” Sansa remarks of the pretty floral arrangements along the counter.

Behind the counter, a gorgeous 30-something woman (Italian? Indian? Lebanese?) smiles at them. “Welcome to Martell House Wedding Planners. Please have a seat. Mr. Martell is out, so I’m managing for the day.”

Sansa smiles back, and makes herself comfortable on the faux leather seat, while Jon says, “We’re here about the cards, I’m sure you know…”

“Ah yes.” Her smile grows wider. “Myrcella told me about it-the Starks, isn’t it?”

“Um, yeah.”

She flashes dazzlingly white teeth. “Ella had it ready. Here we are, Robert and Margaery, turquoise with gold trim, wolf watermark...”

She brings out a velvet box, carefully unclasps it. Jon bends over to take a look, but Sansa elbows him out of the way, with a ridiculous “Move, you prat”, hogging the entire counter. _Bitch._

Over her shoulder, Jon admires the card _._ It’s pretty, smart, what’s the pretentious word for it?-....ah, yes, _aesthetic_. It’s quite fitting that the entire design was not created by Robb (who was a shit doodler) or even Margaery (too obsessed with getting the Chantilly lace _just so_ on her dress sleeves) but by Sansa. It was only the two of them, Sansa and him, these past couple of days- _the cruel irony of it-_ struggling to perfect the wedding. It was they who had set up their respective best friends for their first date, they who did a vicious amount of planning to make sure that military man Robert would keep crossing paths with Reporter Margaery until karma came to bite them back in the ass in the form of sinister, violently loud activities from their respective roommates’ studies.

Jon sighs, as Sansa sits down with the cards and starts taking _actual fucking notes in an actual fucking planner_ and babbling to him about the colour scheme and the fonts and _should they put in the seating arrangements in turquoise too?-would that be trying too hard?-very Tiffany’s no?_ \- and he nods along, seemingly uninterested and actually thinking of more important things than Robb’s wedding- things like existentialism and financial crises and just how _magnificent_ this particular sister of his best mate looked in that particular dress, _could she maybe stop licking her lips like that_ ….

“You complete dimwit, are you even listening?”

He snaps out of his not so existential reverie. Sansa throws him a card. “Here, look at it. They put in a single ‘D’ in Eddard. We have to fix that.”

“Mhmm.” Ned would never notice. Heck, he wouldn’t care. Catelyn would though, and Sansa is Cat’s daughter through and through.

Sansa smirks at his indifference and he inwardly dies for the candy red on her mouth. He pretends to be critical for her sake though.

“I’m so happy for you both” Counter Goddess says.

Jon blinks and Sansa says, with an ever-so-slight raising of her perfect eyebrows “Sorry, what?”

“I said I am so happy for you both, ma’am. You’ll make a beautiful couple.”

Sansa looks like she’d been shot. He derives perverse pleasure from the look on her face. She clears her throat importantly, begins “We’re-”

“Ever so grateful for your wishes, ma’am.” Jon chimes in. “Wouldn’t have been possible without Martell House Wedding planners, bless ‘em.”

“Why thank you,” says the bemused woman.

“Oh, don’t mention it,” Sansa gnashes her teeth. "But you didn't put in the D."

"That's what she said," Jon says sweetly, watching chaos unfold with his words. Mark Antony would've been proud.

* * *

 

“I’ll kill you,” she announces from the backseat.

“Now, now, you shouldn't work yourself up” he savours the moment, prepares the stage, drowns in the punchline of it- “WIFE.”

She smacks him hard and her nails gash him accidentally. “Kinky.”

Sansa gives up. “You’re our punishment, you dumbfuck Jon Snow.”

“I’m your divine archangel of redemption, Sansa Stark,” he replies, turning onto the freeway.

Maybe he _will_ marry her. Just for the heck of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had fun writing this! I know many of us in the Jonsa community imagine Sansa to be like Cher, a bratty and adorable princess, but I have a slightly more mature, more competitive and sarcastic image of her, kinda like Cheryl Blossom (I imagined Madelaine to be Sansa while writing this story :D) Tell me how you liked it!


	4. A War Amongst Ourselves

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 4: Truth  
> Set in the first two episodes of Season 7.

_We need to trust each other. We can’t fight a war amongst ourselves. We have so many enemies now._

Funny, how things worked. Paradoxical almost. That behind every lie they had ever concocted, there was, no matter how infinitesimal, a shard of truth shining underneath.

* * *

 

There is a slight dichotomy between Maester Wolkan’s present demeanour when he shuffles into Jon’s chamber and the vibes he’d radiated this very morning: all polite smiles and clipped reassurances. It sets Jon’s teeth on edge and he pretends to be studying the map more intensely so he can resist the urge to punch the man full in his face.

“Your Grace.”

He nods, tracing his finger over the curve of the White Knife.

“Lady Sansa wishes to speak to you. She is waiting outside.”

Of course she is.

He sits by the fire, placing the house insignia on a pile of letters. All his duties are nominal and military, he does the legwork, Sansa manages the state and administration. Land leases, conscriptions, compensations for widows of war…nothing goes past Lady Stark’s eyes. She is efficient, practical, resourceful, loyal. She is everything he wishes he could be for his people.

Of late, Jon wonders if he has been very successful at it.

He hears footsteps, eventually stopping before him. Unseeingly, he acknowledges her. “Sansa.”

She looks down at him. Her blue gaze is cold like frost. “Your Grace,” she says in a voice meant to cut. That is not an address she uses for him. It is a sham, a mockery. It is cruel and Sansa is _never_ cruel unless the streak of white-hot rage that she buries beneath her berry-soft skin breaks out.

“You wanted to speak.”

“So I did. I want to ask something of you.”

“Well then, on with it. Anything at all.”

“Abandon your plans. Don’t set foot into Dragonstone. This is madness.”

Jon closes his eyes. Exhales deeply. “I have thought this through. Already.”

“You have not. You’re thinking on the impulse. You always do. I will not have you returned in an urn.”

“We are not storming Dragonstone for a battle. We are going as allies, in need of war ammunition. A negotiation, I could say. Daenerys has no cause to-”

“ _Yes she does_!” Sansa practically hisses, slamming her palms down upon the wooden table, startling the white ravens on the cages by the window. “She is a Targaryen! A megalomaniac without rationale, a despot if you will, and she should feel nothing for our cause but see us as some ambitious Northern rebels out to steal her ugly iron chair. You’re endangering yourself and the lives of all the men who follow you there, and _I will not have it_!” she checks herself, realizing she’s looming over him in her rage, unlike her usual restraint.

Jon keeps his calm, though it is a task of monumental effort. “I’m doing it because it is our only chance of surviving the winter, and then the Long Night, if it comes upon us again. You know I have no more wish to visit the Targaryen than I do. And I promise you our men won’t be harmed.”

“Well, what about _you_?” she sounds so annoyed, as of a mother dealing with an incorrigible child. “Are you so sure of your own safety too?”

“Shouldn’t I be?”

“Oh are you so confident?”Sansa laughs harshly, into his face, on the verge of hysteria. “Are you going to negotiate when she decides to sic her dragons upon you? What, you’ll wave a treaty into their faces? Hope they can diplomatically settle matters with you?”

“I think they’ll do a better job of understanding than the show you’re putting on right now,” he retorts coldly. Watches her face drain of colour, watches her eyes widen at his apathy. It hurts, but it's necessary.

Eventually she collects herself. “So you’ll leave,” she tells him flatly. “You’ll leave, despite knowing the perils of such a journey.  You won’t listen to me, will you?”

Finally, Jon raises his gaze to meet hers. In a voice as slick in its cut as Valyrian steel, he replies, “No.”

* * *

 

When she emerges from his chambers, her face is ashen and her mouth set thin. She sees her stewards and subjects stealing stealthy glances, whispering to each other. After all, the confrontation between their Lady and their Lord ( _King_ , she corrects herself with bitter self-irony) was hardly private.

“Don’t you remember what happened to our grandfather?!” she had asked, voice echoing round the Great Hall, her fury incensed by the approving nods of Lord Glover and Lord Manderly, among others.  Even little Lyanna Mormont had seemed aghast at the King in the North’s sudden change of tactic.

Then, “ _You’re abandoning your people! You’re abandoning your home!_ ”

He had smiled at that, _smiled_ , like he wasn’t marching to his death in steady measured beats. Men use roses and Dornish silks to proclaim their love. Jon left Sansa the largest kingdom in all Westeros and the small porcelain box of his trust. What more was there to ask? What else would she say?

Only the naked, hollow truth.  _You’re abandoning me. You’re abandoning me_.

* * *

Even after he has slammed the rat to a wall and threatened to kill him if he so much as touched Sansa, the anger doesn’t subside. He knows it is natural, an act of brotherly instinct and he also knows how he keeps skirting in circles around the actuality of the alternative. Not just the real reason why he takes it upon himself to sail to Dragonstone even as the thought chills him, but also why these past couple of days he walks on edge round Sansa, disagreeing with her, snapping at her skittishly, shutting down her concerns for him, forcing his stare away from her heartbreakingly beautiful eyes and the red curls that dance down her waist.

He raises his arm in farewell, and she does too. _Forget and forgive me._

Maybe when he returns, if he returns, he’ll tell her everything.

For now, the truth can wait.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is not romantic so much as a sort of study about the emotional mechanism at work within Jon and Sansa, I understand that to be ruler is a constant conflict between the head and heart. While I have some doubts about political!Jon, I am definitely interested in the theory. Comments are appreciated (I'm still bitter abut my modern au flopping lmao, ok?)


	5. Roadside Roses, Bastards Brave

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 5: Bastards  
> Alayne's musings at the Vale, often turn to one subject: her bastard brother Jon, the last of the wolves besides herself.  
> Book verse.

In the mornings and noons, draped in petal-frail gossamers with winged cloaks, she is Alayne Stone. Alayne of the dark tresses and azure eyes and saucy jibes, who chatters merrily with Mya Stone and Miranda Royce over plates of lemon cakes, whose silvery voice echoes off the halls of the Eyrie as she sings Sweetrobin to sleep. Petyr Baelish’s’ beautiful bastard Alayne, the Roadside Rose, a woman grown of spice and wit.

In the dawns and dusks though, when the minstrels in the galleries grow quiet, and a soft silence pervades like fog in the mountains, she retreats to the gardens and prays for nothing but to become Sansa again.

Oh, she loves it here. She loves the old proud castle, with its glistening white walls and splashing fountains. She loves her girls and she loves how she can move like water through every inch of the Eyrie with no Joffrey to torment her and no Cersei to answer to. But it isn’t home.

She prays for her family, so far gone, they might as well be make-believe stories, for all Alayne could see. Her father and her mother, and her two littlest brothers. Brave, brave Robb, murdered for one summer of love, all his glory swept away in the Red Wedding. Arya, her only sister, lost in the chaos following her father’s death.

More often than not, however, she prays for the alive over the dead.

Jon. Jon Snow, her half-brother, whom she treated all her life with no more warmth than if he were an ostler’s boy. He is of her blood, the only other member of her family, who lives on in flesh-and-bone long after House Stark has been obliterated. Belatedly, she misses him. She thinks back to when they were feckless children, before honour and pride made her cold to his warm smiles and attempts at amity. She thinks of him bringing her blue roses from the garden when she was five, pushing her swing up higher and higher till he is only a blur of colour on the ground and the sky beckons as little Sansa squeals in glee.

He is a bastard too. He has been one all his life. Sansa and Jeyne and even her Lady Mother had ostracized him for it. And yet here she is, a love child now, cut from the same cloth as Jon was. The last wolves of the pack.

Alayne prays for his health. She prays for a chance, any chance, one boat against a deluge, that he’ll find his way back to her. She’ll beg for his friendship, but not before she begs for his forgiveness. And she knows, instinctively that he will forgive her. She knows that he is the bastard brave that she can never hope to be.

Under an eave, she finds a pair of polished stones. She leaves them somewhere so snow shall cover stone, and she hopes that her prayers reach Jon Snow.

In the spring, the snow recedes and when Alayne walks into the garden, she finds the two stones covered in a delicate layer of pink frost, like newlyweds covered by bridal flowers. She blushes at the thought, but it makes her wonder. _We bastards must have each other’s back_ , Mya says.

Alayne prays harder.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally, I managed to keep it drabble-sized :D I can't make up story titles so bear with me!  
> Also, because I cannot have mental peace until I explain this, frost is not pink but it reflects the pink morning skies. Now that's out of way, let me know how you liked this!


	6. A King, A Queen, A Cloak

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 6: Furs  
> The war is over. The Starks reign victorious. After a long courtship, Jon and Sansa decide to get married and move to King's Landing where they'll be named King and Queen. This is a nostalgic fic based on the day of their wedding :)

Mere hours before the ceremony begins, Jon finds Sansa in her old chambers, her head bent over her finished work, fawning like a proud mother of a newborn babe. He thinks of how endearing the picture is: early morning rays laving the room in a burnished glow, new décor on the chamber-walls painted like a foliage of birds, wafting essence of spring flowers from an open casement. And then there is Sansa herself: the play of sun in her red hair, water blue eyes like the sea sapphires of White Harbor. There is something poignant about the way she is seated-she looks like a saint. He decides to leave, to not destroy the fragile tranquility of the moment but as Jon turns, she looks up to see him.

“Is it time yet?”

“No, not yet.” Jon kisses the crown of her head. “And what about you? The people fight for a glimpse of their new Queen. What is one poor man’s voice against so many? I wish you’d see Ser Davos, now.” He chuckles lightly, at the remembrance of his old and trusted companion running through the length of the courtyards, screaming orders to the stewards for the tables to be set, for the guests to be escorted to their seats, his face alarmingly red. “He looks like a hassled chicken.”

“Isn’t Brienne helping him?”

“Lady Brienne has more important things to do. Besides if Tormund keeps lurking around the stable-yards I don’t think she’ll ever set foot outside of this castle again.”

Sansa almost giggles, then controls herself, and turns to her work. “Look what I made,” she says.

On the table, lies a pair of neatly folded fur cloaks. Bridal furs, hand-made. Sansa brushes her palm over the soft fabric. “Jeyne said she wanted to bring over the finest tailors from King’s Landing to make us silk robes.”

“You refused?” Jon asks lightly. “You’d look splendid in silk, I think.”

“I refused.” Sansa says quietly. “This may sound childlike, but I want us to wear something that would bring to mind our House, not the fancy Southron lords. We Starks, we don’t prance about in satins and samite, ours is the old way, the way the North wants. We cannot afford to be lavish.”

“I see,” Jon says thoughtfully. He comes closer, pulls Sansa to him. “I don’t want you to feel like you’re giving up on anything.” He smiles. “I thought you’d want to be the grandest Queen in all of the Seven Kingdoms.”

Sansa’s dimples show despite herself. “Am I not, already?!-but I don’t speak in jest, Jon. And you never saw my work. The tailors of King’s Landing never had a Septa Mordane to show them the ways of the world!” she shakes out the cloaks for her betrothed to see.

It’s only wolf fur pelts on simple woolen cloaks, but Sansa’s butterfly-delicate embroidery makes them look lovelier than anything any Westerosi King or Queen had ever donned. Hers is in the shades of cream-and-gold, and below the waist, russet birds fly in-and-out a wilderness of rich red roses. The direwolf of their house is stamped in gold on the back. Jon’s is in black ( _in keeping with tradition, I suppose_ , he remarks to her amusement) and in silver threads Sansa has depicted the Targaryen dragon and the Stark direwolf against a backdrop of weirwoods. It’s a clever mix of her House hues with his.

Not for the first time, Jon is struck by a wave of pride at the seemingly endless arsenal of talents his wife-to-be unleashes every other day. She is talented, she is kind. She makes people feel at ease. The Realm calls her Queen Sansa the Good. _And she is not even a queen yet_ , Jon thinks. They will go insane at the coronation. _But first, the wedding._ Jon feels a warm blaze within him, one he has not felt for many a day for a long, long time. However when he looks at Sansa, he sees her downcast face, and he knows something is amiss.

“Sansa?”

““Do you remember the last time I made us matching furs? That was the day we faced Ramsay, when we vowed to fight for our home at the cost of our lives.”

He remembers. How couldn’t he?

“ I’ll miss Winterfell. King’s Landing shall feel so strange.” She looks up and he sees her eyes are welling. “Do you know why I wanted to have our wedding in Winterfell? It’s where it all began, Jon. I had _hated_ it here. And now I cannot bear to say goodbye.” A solitary tear falls upon the furs, which Sansa hastily brushes away.

“The Starks shall remain at Winterfell. Arya and Bran will be here to look after our home. And you’ll not be alone in King’s Landing like you’d been before, love. I’ll be at your side. You’ll never be alone again.”

She smiles through her tears. “This is why I made our wedding cloaks myself. I wanted to start my new life, but I am too cowardly to let go of my old one.”

“There is no shame in holding onto your memories, Sansa.” He knows this. He will miss Winterfell too. He’ll miss the godswood and the gardens and the snow and the cold. This is the place they grew up in. This is the place they fought to reclaim. More importantly, this is where they found solace in each other, much after hope had bled out of their lives in every which way. “You’ve been through so much. You’ve waited for this all your life. You deserve to be Queen, more than anyone I’ve ever met.” He stops. “I’ve met a few, I suppose.”

“Jon!”she smacks him on the elbow. He laughs, pulls her to an embrace. Outside, they hear Arya shout, “Alright, you both in there, get down to the godswood and make it lawful before you start lovering again! Seven hells.”

Sansa and Jon chuckle, and then he takes her hand, gazing into her lovely eyes. “Are you ready?”

“I am.”

“Good. Get the furs and let’s go put together your little fairytale.”

“There’s more comfort in familiarity than in fairytales, don’t you think?”

Jon only smiles. “So be it.”

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not proud of this one. (Are the furs necessary? Do they mean something? Could I've perhaps made it...furrier?) Could've been shorter. Also I suck at dialogues. Anyway the theme was taken from jaylahve on Tumblr and her beautiful Jonsa au sets. Go check out her work. :)  
> A/N: They're getting married out of love but it's also a political move. I think at this early stage, I didn't want it to be overtly lovey dovey (though Arya would tell you otherwise lol). Also, the word "blue wedding" I got from tiny-little-bird on Tumblr.


	7. The Horror

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 7: Free Choice  
> I have literally no idea what is going on here.  
> Jon and Sansa visit one of those Haunted House thingies with Robb, Theon, Arya and Gendry. Partially based off an unfortunately true story.

“I can’t believe you showed up, sis,” Arya grins, swaggering down the stairs of the plaza. “I do hope you’re wearing a diaper.”

“I do hope I get to smack you in your fucking face at least twenty times today,” Sansa snaps. She is rewarded with a maddening laugh; the horrifying thought suddenly strikes her that of all of them, Arya is the most likely to emerge from this ordeal with her self-dignity intact.

What birthday plans do kids these days make? Hang out with their mates? Club-nights? Sansa herself has had girls-only sleepovers and movie marathons every year. On her sixteenth birthday, she literally stayed in her bedroom _all day_ and read Novalis. Unfortunately, for Arya, the perfect birthday is to arrange a meeting with her siblings and boyfriend at a Haunted House in some bloody South London Film City.

She might as well have asked Sansa to jump down their rooftop and impale herself on a gate spike. When it comes to horror movies or generally ANYTHING horror-related, Sansa is a royal failure. She stays indoors on Halloween nights. She began screaming halfway through _The Exorcist_. It isn’t her fault all her siblings are pathologically deranged and obsessed with the dead. But their dad, in a disturbingly unfair show of partiality, told Sansa to be a sport and not disappoint her sister on her special day. ( _What about my mental health, Dad_??)

So here they are: Arya, her on-and-off boyfriend Gendry (a sweet guy, although he confesses-in a rare moment of solidarity-that he practically wet himself while watching _Sinister_ ), Theon, looking as green as Sansa feels, and Robb (the only other person who probably won’t throw up during the course of the evening).

Sansa notices however, that Gendry holds not five, but six tickets. “Are we expecting someone?”

“Oh, _yes_. You’re going to love this,” -she hates how Arya looks the moment she says it, because she knows, from twenty one years’ worth of experience, that fresh hell is going to be unleashed.

“Who in seven hells…”

“I’m so sorry I’m late guys but downtown’s a fucking mess,” a voice says from behind her. And suddenly Sansa feels like she did that one time Rickon had accidentally kicked a football into her gut.

_Fuckfuckfuckfuck._

Jon is Robb’s best friend and his roommate of three years. Since Arya frequents Robb’s place more often than Sansa, she knows Jon far better, has all the deets on him. Sansa had seen him once or twice, and then never again, because frankly those beautiful grey eyes and windswept dark curls and that Christ-like body and those perfect zygomatic arches are none of her business.

 _Hahahahaha_. Not as if she spent hours extracting every last detail about him from her sister: _studies political science. Had an eco-warrior girlfriend until recently. Loves Leonard Cohen. Sleeps naked_. (Sansa doesn’t ask how Arya knows the last.) Not as if she wakes up in the dead of night flushed to the roots of her hair, after lascivious dreams where he pins her against a library wall and makes her _beg_ for mercy. Not at all.

“Sansa, right?” standing before her in the flesh, he is ridiculously, obscenely beautiful.

She blinks. She feels a strong desire to implode, like a watermelon. “Hi, Jon.”

 “He’s to be your date for the night,” Arya tells her, cackling devilishly at her own ingenuity. “You can be her chaperone, Jon. Since, y’know, you are the only two who’s flying solo.”

Jon smiles brightly, savouring the idea. “I’m all for it. Shall we go in then?”

She is aware her face resembles the frog-footman from Alice In Wonderland, but there’s nothing Sansa can do to back out of this now. _I won’t beg for mercy,_ she thinks _. I will be begging for forgiveness because I’m going to retch on his spotless white shirt_.

“Sure,” she says weakly.

* * *

Twenty-five minutes of utter chaos follow.

Gendry passes out in the first ten minutes and has to be hauled out by a security guard and an actor dressed as Pennywise.

Theon gets chucked out for shouting OHFUCKMEFUCKMEFUCKME in the presence of minors in the House. Robb assures the guard Theon has done worse. It doesn’t help. They spend the rest of the evening eating fries in the diner outside and counting down till the rest of the gang show up.

Arya gets chucked out too. She insists that there is nothing wrong in punching a ghoul for self-defense purposes:“If that bitch tried it with me, I’d pay her back.”

"Wonder how those two are faring," Robb mumbles through a mouthful of fries.

* * *

 

Jon laughs through all the scares. Sansa sobs hysterically, practically ripping off Jon’s shirt in a life-or-death grip. “WHY ARE YOU LAUGHING?” she shouts. “JESUS FUCKING CHRIST.”

It only makes him laugh harder. But he holds onto her tightly and lets her go behind him so that he faces all the scares first. “Look, the Babadook’s foundation is peeling,” he tells her.

She screams bloody murder and buries her face in the crook of his shoulder.

Even so, Jon and Sansa make it through, right to the end. “Well, you took your time,” Theon sniggers. Robb eyes his roommate and his sister, “What were you doing, huh? You look _very_ messed-up.”

“What’s that s’pposed to mean?” Sansa catches a glimpse of their reflections in the plaza door and cringes. Jon’s shirt has a rip down the front. Her makeup is smudged. “Jesus.”

Her date ignores the implications of what just happened, seats himself comfortably beside an ashen Gendry and says, “We had a great time.”

“Oh I bet you did,” Arya can’t help snorting into her cherry cola. Sansa prays for death.

* * *

Once they are outside her apartment, just she and Jon, she turns to him, and says, “I’m sorry.”

“What for?” his eyes are full of mischief.

“For tearing off a chunk of your shirt, I guess.” _How is it possible for one person to be this socially awkward and incompetent?_

“Oh, don’t mind that,” he reassures. “Next time just go all the way through. Can you make it in one piece to the front door? Or must I carry you?”

She assures him she can manage by herself, and it's only once he is gone does she realise what he’s just implied. 

_All the way through._

That night when the monsters creep out from underneath her beds to mess with her head, she chuckles, demented, half-stumbling in love, and welcomes them in.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So there was my last entry for Jonsa Drabbles Week! I'll admit, it wasn't the strongest writing wise, but I didn't want to end out on a sad note.


End file.
